This question, as formulated by Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), the “last universal genius,” is a great starting point for philosophical inquiry.

It has not only metaphysical but psychological significance. There is no need to account for nothing. There is nothing there to account for.

But if I have nothing in my pocket one moment and find, to my astonishment, $100 there the next moment, I know that there must be some reason or explanation for its sudden appearance.

Philosophy begins with astonishment when we know there must be some reason, but we do not know what that reason is. “Nothing is without reason” (Nihil est sine ratione) is one of the fundamental principles of philosophy. It is also the principle that energizes scientists.

For Leibniz, as well as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas before him, the ultimate reason for the existence of any of the things we find in our current universe is God, since only a divine being with infinite power can create something out of nothing.

No finite or contingent being can create itself.

Not so fast, says Lawrence Krauss, director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University.

He has shown, in his bestselling book A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing (Free Press, 2012), that we do not need God (or philosophy or theology for that matter) in order to explain the present state of the universe. Physics is our sole reliable intellectual guide.

At the same time, Krauss is hardly the bearer of glad tidings.

He argues that the universe started from nothing, became something and is heading back to nothing with accelerating speed.

As a consequence, human life is meaningless as we complete our petty lives rushing headlong toward oblivion. Nonetheless, some readers find Krauss’ bleak view of things somewhat exhilarating, since it allows them to create their own meaning.

The late Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, agreed to write the afterword to Krauss’ book but was not able to because of his illness.

Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, took his place. This triumvirate of avowed atheists has raised questions about the objectivity of the author’s purposes.

Is physics so broad as to devour both philosophy and theology?

The essential question is whether Krauss has proven scientifically what he set out to prove. Are all intelligent people now obliged to live in moral despair? Should philosophers and theologians seek new employment?

The main problem, however, with Krauss’ approach, and it is a huge one, is his misrepresentation of nothing. He thinks that nothing is really something, albeit something extremely tenuous, such as a “quantum void” in which the principles of quantum mechanics are still operative.

He does admit, although parenthetically and close to the end of his work, that he takes the principles of quantum mechanics for granted: “I have no idea if this notion can be usefully dispensed with,” he states. “At least I don’t know of any productive work in this regard.”

He never gets back to pure nothing and, consequently, never explains how anything came out of nothing.

He actually complains that “some philosophers and theologians define and redefine ‘nothing’ as not being any of the versions of nothing that scientists currently describe” and that he is told by his religious critics that “I cannot refer to empty space as ‘nothing,’ but rather a ‘quantum vacuum’ to distinguish it from the philosopher’s idealized nothing.”

The philosopher’s notion of nothing is not “idealized”; it is accurate. Krauss’ notion of nothing is not only fabricated, but retrogressive.

In the fourth century, St. Augustine explained: “We are perfectly right in believing that God made the world from nothing, because even if the world was made from some kind of matter, that matter has itself been made from nothing” (On the Faith and the Creed, 2).

Augustine was most astute in referring to “some kind of matter,” allowing for the recognition of forms of matter that were not only unknown in his time, but also unimaginable.

Aquinas maintained that the more imperfect the matter to be transformed, the greater must be the active power that transforms it.

To transform a quantum vacuum ultimately into human beings, therefore, is a greater divine accomplishment than transforming, let us say, one species of mammalia to a higher one.

Aquinas’ logical conclusion is that when the passive power is nothing, the active power must be infinite. Consequently, only God can create from nothing.

Dominican Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange makes unambiguously clear the notion of “nothing” when he states the following: “Creation from nothing means a productive act where there is no material cause, no subject matter to work on, so that the entire being of created things comes from their creative cause. Before creation, nothing of the created things existed, not even its matter, however unformed you may suppose it [to be].”

The phrase “however unformed” is also most astute, since it allows for the kind of gossamer, nebulous, even hypothetical speculations that emerge from theoretical physics.

Krauss does not show how something comes from nothing, but theorizes how something came from something prior. His wildly extravagant claim that the universe came from nothing is just that — wildly extravagant.

Treating something as if it were nothing is, according to one reviewer, a kind of philosophical cheating. Writing for The New York Times, David Albert, a professor of philosophy at Columbia University and author of Quantum Mechanics and Experience, states, rather tartly, “As far as I can see is that Krauss is dead wrong, and his religious and philosophical critics are absolutely right” (New York Times, March 25, 2012).

But Albert goes further and laments that what Krauss’ book offers “is the pale, small, silly, nerdy accusation that religion is, I don’t know, dumb.”

More than a million people have listened to Krauss’ lecture about his book on YouTube. It seems that he is more interested in a conjurer’s trick, pulling a rabbit out of a hat, than in pure science. Just as people know that the rabbit was in the hat at the beginning, Krauss has failed to convince us that the universe emerged from nothing.

It is not the office of the scientist to trick people, but to inform them.

There never was a nothing that had the power to generate something.

Donald DeMarco, Ph.D. is a senior fellow of HLI America, an initiative of Human Life International.

I think the author here misunderstands the physics of the processes about which doctor Krauss is talking. I myself an a chemist and I have only a surface understanding of quantum mechanics and cosmology, but I believe that doctor Krauss was actually talking about the philosophical nothing. The quantum vacuum was only used as an example. He was referring to the Big Bang cosmology, and how the space and time themselves were created at that moment from nothing. I know that for a lot of people without a scientific background this notion may seem unbelievable. But a lot out things are like that in quantum physics - particles popping in and out of existence, particles appearing in two different places at the same time, particles interacting with one another instantaneously across great distances etc.

Posted by Chris on Tuesday, Sep, 18, 2012 11:48 PM (EDT):

Flamen—I don’t understand your question. About the first part, I haven’t heard anyone say that matter is infinite or eternal. The current scientific understanding of the universe is that there is a finite amount of matter, and it came into being at a specific time. Furthermore, it seems like all matter will eventually decay, protons seem to decay, and all matter will go away. That there was a beginning and will be an end agrees, roughly, with the Catholic view.

On the other hand, Science can’t talk about God. Catholic theology says that God always was, and it was he who created matter, energy, space, and time. He is not bound by the time He created, but sees all of His creation in His eternal present. Yet we were created in His image, and our free decisions affect the course of history in the universe He created.

We don’t talk often enough about how amazing this all is.

Posted by Psy on Saturday, Sep, 15, 2012 6:30 PM (EDT):

Paul H =“God did not sit alone for billions of years, because God is not bound by time as we are. God experiences every moment simultaneously, whether that moment is September 14, 2012 at 2:36 PM, or whether that moment is 14 billion years ago.”

We have to rescue him!

Posted by Brian Westley on Saturday, Sep, 15, 2012 1:08 PM (EDT):

“Aquinas maintained that the more imperfect the matter to be transformed, the greater must be the active power that transforms it.”

Aquinas made a lot of assertions. I see no reason to believe this assertion is true. Got a shred of evidence?

“To transform a quantum vacuum ultimately into human beings, therefore, is a greater divine accomplishment than transforming, let us say, one species of mammalia to a higher one.”

Only if you believe Aquinas’ unsupported assertion, but if you do that, why no just swallow everything he believed whole?

Posted by Flamen on Saturday, Sep, 15, 2012 11:26 AM (EDT):

How does one answer the view that matter is infinite and eternal as the view that God is eternal?

Posted by Chris on Saturday, Sep, 15, 2012 1:45 AM (EDT):

When I learned about the big bang in my Cosmology classes at Fancy University (with five Nobel prize winners on faculty, in those days), they taught us that before the big bang, there was no matter or energy, of course, but also no space or time. There was no volume of quantum vacuum sitting around waiting for something to miraculously appear, there was NOTHING, and NOWHERE to put anything. Has this understanding changed? Where does Krauss get his quantum vacuum from?

It reminds me of a joke—Scientists come along and tell God, “We don’t need you anymore! We can make life all by ourselves!” God, bemused, asks them to demonstrate. They bend down and pick up some dirt. God tells them, “Put down that dirt! I made that dirt!”

Rover: I agree that it is hard to fit God’s eternal present with our free will in our heads. I found C. S. Lewis’s “The Great Divorce” helpful in giving a “feel” for how that works. It is closely connected to “the problem of pain”—why would a loving, omnipotent God allow innocent suffering from the consequences of other’s sins. In (ridiculous) brief, God has created us with REAL free will, and so he allows (almost always, but not quite) our actions to have their natural consequences, even on innocents. God sees our choices, but they are our own, made in our free will. It’s not how I would have created the world, all those nasty atheists would have been blasted by lightening long ago, but that’s what we observe.

Posted by Linus on Friday, Sep, 14, 2012 8:01 PM (EDT):

Go Thomas, Go Augustine!!

Posted by Paul H on Friday, Sep, 14, 2012 6:55 PM (EDT):

Rover Serton wrote: “That truely challenges free will vs. predestination since God would therefore know I would never believe in him and my brother would die in a car accident, before it happened. And he did nothing to correct either thing. Omnipotent?”
.
I believe in both free will and predestination, if predestination is understood in a certain sense. However, God having knowledge in advance is not necessarily the same thing as God predestining something to happen. Also, how do you know that you will never believe in God, or that God has not done or will not do something to prevent that state? (And despite what God may do, you still have free will to believe or not to believe.)

Posted by John R. on Friday, Sep, 14, 2012 6:05 PM (EDT):

The point that God did not sit around before He made his son has already been made. One must distinguish between the Word from eternity and the Word becoming man in the person of Jesus. May I refer you all to the words of St. John’s gospel:- “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God”.
Jesus was born at a critical time in the history of mankind. The time was just right for him to accomplish the setting up of the Church and the spread of his teaching.
I rather like the example of the difference between nothing and having nothing in a bank account. Clearly not all have a real understanding of just what “nothing” really means.

Posted by Rover Serton on Friday, Sep, 14, 2012 5:41 PM (EDT):

Paul H: To challenge an atheist author re: something from nothing as unbelieveable, and then post “God experiences every moment simultaneously, whether that moment is September 14, 2012 at 2:36 PM, or whether that moment is 14 billion years ago.”

That truely challenges free will vs. predestination since God would therefore know I would never believe in him and my brother would die in a car accident, before it happened. And he did nothing to correct either thing. Omnipotent?

I really enjoyed the deep thought put into this statement: But Albert goes further and laments that what Krauss’ book offers “is the pale, small, silly, nerdy accusation that religion is, I don’t know, dumb.” “Nerdy”...A way of saying someone thinks and studies way to much to be normal. Oh well, just wanted to throw in an Atheist position since Krauss is probably not going to visit.

Rover.

Posted by Paul H on Friday, Sep, 14, 2012 5:34 PM (EDT):

Also, to follow up from my previous comment, God did not “make his son” after some period of years. As the Nicene Creed says, Christians believe that Jesus was “born of the Father before all ages.”

Posted by Joe P. on Friday, Sep, 14, 2012 5:03 PM (EDT):

“With the universe about 15 billion years old, why did God sit alone for 14,999,998,000 years or so to make his son?” - Rover

So given the premise that God experiences time just like us humans, you conclude that God doesn’t exist because it would be irrational to think that God would “sit alone” for 14.99 billion years before “making” his son. Man, God really must have been bored and lonely!

Why did you wait 14.99 billion nanoseconds between lunch and breakfast? Seems like an awfully long time to wait 14.99 billion of some time unit.

Posted by MikefromED on Friday, Sep, 14, 2012 5:02 PM (EDT):

“Krauss does not show how something comes from nothing, but theorizes how something came from something prior. His wildly extravagant claim that the universe came from nothing is just that — wildly extravagant.

Treating something as if it were nothing is, according to one reviewer, a kind of philosophical cheating. Writing for The New York Times, David Albert, a professor of philosophy at Columbia University and author of Quantum Mechanics and Experience, states, rather tartly, “As far as I can see is that Krauss is dead wrong, and his religious and philosophical critics are absolutely right” (New York Times, March 25, 2012).”

Will that stop atheists from now on claiming that a scientist has ‘proved’ that something can come from nothing?

Posted by andy on Friday, Sep, 14, 2012 4:13 PM (EDT):

“Science and Religion just don’t really mix well.”

Exactly, hence the proceeding article.

Posted by Joan on Friday, Sep, 14, 2012 4:11 PM (EDT):

What is 15 billion years, give or take a few, in comparison to eternity? God exists outside of time. To paraphrase a popular hymn, “When we’ve been here 15 billion years…bright shining as the sun. We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise…then when we’ve first begun.”

Posted by Paul H on Friday, Sep, 14, 2012 3:36 PM (EDT):

Rover Serton wrote: “With the universe about 15 billion years old, why did God sit alone for 14,999,998,000 years or so to make his son?”
.
God did not sit alone for billions of years, because God is not bound by time as we are. God experiences every moment simultaneously, whether that moment is September 14, 2012 at 2:36 PM, or whether that moment is 14 billion years ago.

Posted by Isaac on Friday, Sep, 14, 2012 3:28 PM (EDT):

Rover asks, “With the universe about 15 billion years old, why did God sit alone for 14,999,998,000 years or so to make his son?”

Your questions strongly suggests you’re more interested in trying to make a point than in thinking and understanding.

I think he came at a very logical point in time - both in terms of human development and in terms of numerical development. He came right as the human population was beginning to explode.

You can also read a few pretty thoughtful answers from average joe Catholics here:

The problem is indeed that Krauss asks a question but gives an answer for another, entriely different, question. The very answer he gives is quite debatable, but even if Krauss is correct he does not answer the question he asks.

Posted by Rover Serton on Friday, Sep, 14, 2012 11:43 AM (EDT):

Interesting article. Ignoring the beginning, I don’t see any disagreement about the ending of this grand experiment. In 1 billion years, the earth will be too hot to support any life. Not global warming but the slow heating of the sun as it reaches it’s zenith and eventual extinction.

It also begs the question, With the universe about 15 billion years old, why did God sit alone for 14,999,998,000 years or so to make his son?

Science and Religion just don’t really mix well. One is falseafiable, one isn’t.

Rover.

Posted by Paul H on Friday, Sep, 14, 2012 11:38 AM (EDT):

Good article. Physicist Stephen Barr has some great comments on this topic in his excellent book “Modern Physics and Ancient Faith.” If I remember correctly, he uses the analogy of a bank account. Suppose that I have a bank account with a balance of $0. Do I have nothing? In one sense I do, because I have no money. But in another sense, I do not, because a bank account with a $0 balance assumes the existence of many things: the bank itself, the concept of money, the rules and methods by which I may make deposits into my account and withdrawals from my account, etc. So even if I have a $0 balance in my bank account, there is still “something” which gives meaning to the fact that I have a bank account at all.
.
And it is the same with physics. According to this article, Krauss presupposes the laws of quantum mechanics, and thinks that these laws can exist even in a state where there is “nothing.” But the existence of those laws shows that we do not truly have nothing, because even the laws of physics themselves must have some explanation.

Posted by May El on Friday, Sep, 14, 2012 11:21 AM (EDT):

Thanks for this piece. Too many people today are not critical thinkers as they have not learned any philosphy in their education. As a result they read a book like Krauss’ and accept it at face value not understanding the underlying fallacy.

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